


The Price of Tea in America

by InvalidTag



Category: Hazbin Hotel (Web Series)
Genre: Alternate Universe - World War II, Gen, Historical References, Old Age, Sir Pentious is an old man, What-If
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-18
Updated: 2021-01-18
Packaged: 2021-03-16 21:14:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,605
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28837623
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/InvalidTag/pseuds/InvalidTag
Summary: This story is about an old man who should have died in 1888.
Comments: 6
Kudos: 14





	The Price of Tea in America

This bloody war would be the end of them. All of them. Surely, this war would do it. 

He swam through his memory, picking out the moments when he had paid any attention to a war. 

First the Prussians had gotten uppity with the French. That was the first war he could recall, and that was when he had been a young man.

The next came many years later, when the price of tea skyrocketed because some “Boxers” in China had gotten uppity with the British. He had been happy when the tea returned to normal price.

He hadn’t paid much attention to the Japanese getting uppity with the Russians, but he knew the former had whipped the latter in no time at all. He found it funny that such a mighty country had been brought to its knees by the Orientals. 

Then the bloody First World War, “The War to End All Wars” they had called it. Absolute rubbish, he thought in retrospect. Even he had said it so at the time, though he was far too old even then to go and fight. He could forgive the optimism of England in the early months of that damnable conflict. If only he had the licenses to supply his kinsmen with his machines of war, they would have all been home by Christmas. The Krauts had put up a stiff fight for four long years, and even he couldn’t deny them that. He wasn’t so stubborn to hate the young men who had died for their country. It hadn’t been their fault, and it still wasn’t. It was old farts like him, though he hadn’t considered himself one of them at the time. 

What he would give to be fifty again. 

More recently, his memory had blurred in terms of wars; the rest of his cognition remained as sharp as ever. One minute there were “Communists” and “Bolsheviks” in Russia, the next the Irish were burning down Dublin. What a farce that had been, though that was nothing compared to what was happening now.

Simon’s eyes flicked up towards the gunmetal grey skies. Storm clouds blew in the distance, eyeing the white cliffs of Dover like a sugary sweet. He chuckled. If the Germans couldn’t take England, what hope did Mother Nature have?

A strong gust of wind ripped through the town, the loose folds of his jacket flapping in the wind. His cap threatened to flip from the few wispy strands of hair still planted in his lumpy scalp. He had felt the same wind many times over the course of his life, but never had it felt so cold as it did in the moment. Could this have been a sign from God, of some coming cataclysm?

He barked out another laugh. God hadn't given him anything since the day He had given Simon a brain and two testicles. 

“Oi, old man.”

The town was bustling with soldiers of all fibres. Short, stocky types to tall, pencil-thin types, all clad in similar shades of the same baggy uniform, with empty pockets and sagging rucksacks. Something else had been etched into their faces, though, something beyond the characteristic bravado of a man in uniform. 

Worry. Anxiety. A quiet terror.

Simon looked up at the soldier in front of him. One of the skinny types, with a trimmed head. Even in his age, Simon could see the palimpsest of the messy mop of hair that used to hang from this young man’s head. He held a pad of paper in one hand and a pencil in the other, a rifle hung over his shoulder comfortably alongside his pack. His pockets were stocked.

“Why, yes?” he responded.

“Can I sit here?” the soldier said, shimmying his pack further onto his shoulder, “Please?”

Simon smiled warmly and scooted over—not much, but enough for the twig-like boy to take a seat and let out a rugged groan, hunching over to stare at the empty sheet of paper. 

“Thanks. I just gotta… finish this here note, y’see.”

Simon would never be used to the crass tones and syllables of American English. If he weren’t so intelligent, he might have confused him for a Pole, or a Cossack.

“To a loved one?” Simon guessed, plucking his cane from the ground and resting it in his lap.

The soldier’s silence spoke of confliction more than his words did, “You could say that, yeah. Yes.”

Simon barked another laugh and let it linger. “Had enough killing, hm?”

The soldier chuckled, but his laugh didn’t sound genuine, “No. Just… a lot on my mind.”

“I can imagine. You’re a soldier and there’s a bloody _war_ going on!” Simon joked, “Half of Europe wants you dead, lad. And the other half—is already dead.”

“Heh, yeah. Just my luck, huh?” The soldier scoffed, laughing in the face of death with a practiced coolness. He would have had the demeanour to conspire with the upper crust of 1880’s London, Simon knew it. 

“You’d better keep that fire in your belly, son,” Simon said, “else you risk it being replaced with lead.”

The soldier grunted, “I dunno, old man. What can I call ya?”

Simon grinned, “What, you plan on coming back for tea and biscuits after you storm into Berlin? Rifle held high and blood on your boots?”

“If we make it that far…”

Simon’s brows perked up in surprise, “I was only joking, son, now I’m you’re fuckin’ high command?”

The soldier shot back in his seat, his thin back slapping against the back of the bench as he ran his hands down his face, “Ugh, I—look, I ain’t said nothin’ to ya, got it?”

 _“What_ is that garish accent?” Simon said, “are you American?”

“Can’t ya tell by the uniform? O’course I am.”

“My spectacles may be at home,” Simon said, hooking a crooked finger defiantly in the air, “but my ears haven’t gone yet! And your voice sounds American to me. Unless you’re from that godforsaken, frostbitten colony of ours across the Atlantic.”

“Uh… you mean Canada?” the soldier asked.

“Why yes, I do. So out with it already.”

The soldier muttered to himself, something that Simon couldn’t hear, and shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “I’m American, yeah. New York, born and raised. Manhattan”

He could hear it now, the exaggerated way the soldier pronounced his o’s and u’s. _Noo Yowik._ Fascinating. 

“I’ve always wanted to go to America—the continent, not exclusively the country. What’s it like?”

“Whatsa matter? Didn’t get around to it, old man?” The soldier sniped.

“That’s _Simon_ to you, _ruffian,”_ he shot back, “and no, I never did get to travel to wild America. Back in my day, a boat would have been a poor investment for the return I likely would have received.”

“How old are ya, then?”

“Ninety-eight, and not one year less!” Simon coughed out a dry laugh. “The Reaper has been chasing my wrinkly arse for decades now!”

The soldier’s eyes widened. “Holy mother of God! So, what, you was born in…”

“Eighteen forty-six. August the seventeenth, I think.”

“My moms was born in August too. Twenty-sixth, though. So it’s not too far off. Funny, my pops calls her ‘Junebug’, and she always says, ‘but I was born in August’, and he gives her some bullshit about… well, somethin’. Still bullshit.”

“What of your father then?” Simon asked. “What of him and his birth?”

The soldier tapped the pencil against the letter before clenching it in his hand, his knuckles going white. 

“He don’t make us celebrate it. Says it’s ‘fag shit’, then makes us bend ova backwards for moms on her birthday,” the soldier cleared his throat, audibly swallowing raw emotion, “fuck him, though. Beats the shit outta us ninety percent of the time anyway.”

Simon hummed, and deftly kicked one leg over the other. He had nothing to say, but not for lack of words. He still remembered the cold, burly factory owners, and the terrifying goons they employed to beat the lazier, less productive children who worked there. He himself had tasted their mud-stained boots on many occasions, the wicked look of glee on their faces smeared into his memory as they blackened his then-pasty skin. 

His father had never beaten him. He was sure that he would have remembered if he had. And for the first time in years, he realized, he had no wisdom to impart on this feeble soul next to him. 

Simon heard the bellow of an angrier American in the distance, and the soldier’s head shot up. Before he could stand, Simon couldn’t stop himself from clamping his hand on the soldier’s slim shoulder and patting him twice. 

The soldier gave him a kind look, one of deeply veiled but sincere gratitude. He had lived too long to not see the kindness in others, even if they themselves couldn’t. 

“I gotta go. But thanks, old m—I mean, Simon.”

“You’re very welcome, son,” Simon’s hand returned to his cane, “I see a lot of myself in you. Don’t lose your head out there.”

The soldier grunted, and stood, crumpling his letter into his pocket. He moved to trample towards his God-given duty, but froze, wheeling back to face the old man again.

“Name’s Archie. Archie Ragno.”

Simon offered his hand, and the soldier shook it firmly.

“Simon Parker. Pleasure.”

The handshake ended, and the soldier turned back to the road, his boots thumping against the cobbled road until he turned a corner, and left Simon’s mind. 

He couldn’t help but chuckle to himself and wondered about the price of tea in New York.

**Author's Note:**

> I thought to myself, "How could Pentious and Arackniss have possibly shaken hands in life?" And this was what I could come up with.
> 
> For clarification, this is not a shipping story. That wasn't my intention. Pentious would be 98 and Arackniss would be barely a third of his age, so shipping them in this case would be... well, inappropriate to me. 
> 
> Regardless, thanks for reading!


End file.
